Final Israeli pullout from Lebanon is set - Africa & Middle East - International Herald Tribune

JERUSALEM — Israel hopes to pull its last troops out of Lebanon by sundown Friday, which marks the beginning of the Jewish new year, the chief of the Israeli military, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, said Tuesday.

"If all goes without a hitch, to the satisfaction of all sides, the working assumption is that the IDF will leave all the areas it controls by the Jewish New Year holiday," Halutz told a parliamentary committee, a parliamentary spokesman said. The IDF is the acronym for Israeli Defense Forces.

If all did not go well, Halutz said, the Israeli withdrawal "would be delayed another week." But, he said, Hezbollah was respecting the cease-fire that ended the 34-day war.

The United Nations said Tuesday that the number of foreign peacekeepers in Lebanon had reached 4,950, which the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has said was sufficient to allow Israel to leave.

But however thin on the ground the UN forces may be, Israel is clearly reluctant to stay in southern Lebanon much longer, where an unknown number of Israeli troops are vulnerable to attack.

Earlier, Israel said it had already withdrawn from about 80 percent of the Lebanese territory it occupied, ceding its positions to the Lebanese Army and UN troops.

Halutz also said, however, that the Hezbollah militia, with whom Israel fought for 34 days, beginning July 12, has fully abided by the UN cease-fire.

He said that Hezbollah fighters were not wearing uniforms or carrying weapons, and that Israel had detected no significant resupply of weapons and missiles to Hezbollah from its sponsors, Syria and Iran.

The Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has said that his militia would obey the cease-fire, and that if he had foreseen the harsh Israeli response to the Hezbollah raid into Israel in July 12 that captured two soldiers - still in captivity - he would not have ordered the attack.

Israel is hoping that the two soldiers - and a third, captured near Gaza by Palestinian militants in late June - will be released by the Jewish holiday.

In Beirut on Tuesday, the UN humanitarian coordinator, David Shearer, said that Israel had scattered at least 350,000 unexploded cluster bomblets over south Lebanon toward the end of the war.

He said that the number is based on Israeli estimates and excludes cluster bombs dropped by aircraft, and noted that three Lebanese a day have been killed or wounded by the munitions since the war ended.

Israeli officials have said that cluster munitions are legal and were not fired indiscriminately.

In Gaza on Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen broke into the office of WAFA, a prominent Palestinian news agency under the control of President Mahmoud Abbas.

The gunmen beat up a reporter, who was taken to the hospital, and vandalized equipment, the news agency said.

The gunmen accused WAFA of favoring Fatah in its news coverage.

Abbas is in New York at the United Nations General Assembly, where he met on Monday with the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni.

Livni said that Israel wants to reopen dialogue with Abbas, who said that the two "talked about everything" in what he called "a very, very positive meeting."

Abbas is trying to convince Israel and the United States that a proposed national unity government with Hamas will satisfy Western demands that Hamas recognize the right of Israel to exist, forswear violence and accept prior Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

But a draft political program for a new government, published by the Palestinian Media Network in Gaza, does not mention Israel at all.

It does speak of Palestinians achieving the goal of a sovereign state on all territories occupied by Israel in 1967 "using all legitimate means and methods," recognizes the Palestine Liberation Organization as the "sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people," and says that the government "shall respect the agreements signed by the PLO" but "in a manner that protects and safeguards the higher interests and the rights of the Palestinian people."

The program notes that the government should promote its goals based on an Arab initiative that called for peace with Israel on 1967 lines but, it adds, "without affecting any rights of the Palestinian people."

Such phrases, and another emphasizing "the right of return" of Palestinian refugees, are seen by Israeli as only a conditional acceptance of a two-state solution and thus falling short of international demands.